Notes

Killer of Sheep belongs to a strong tradition of films that show how the worlds of children and adults intersect. Other films we mentioned: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948), The Kid (Charlie Chaplin, 1921), Homework (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989) (and many other Kiarostami films), Ohayô (Yasujiro Ozu, 1959), I Was Born, But... (Yasujiro Ozu, 1932), and Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, 2006)

A correction: when I cited a few juxtapositions in the film and talked about how the various, disparate images "mingle in the mind," my recollection of the details was a bit off. The boys running in the street (from dogs) is indeed followed by Stan at work in the slaughterhouse, but the check-cashing scene -- which in my head was followed again by a look at Stan's job, and specifically the hooks -- is actually followed by a group of boys riding a bike out into the street in front of a car, which nicely completes a circle of danger, come to think of it. The hooks appear elsewhere.